Fort Hood massacre: Gunman linked to al-Qaeda as he awakes from coma

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood military base in
Texas, awoke from a coma on Monday as it emerged he had tried to make
contact with al-Qaeda before carrying out the massacre.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army doctor named as a suspect in the shooting death of 13 people and the wounding of 31 others at Fort Hood, Texas Photo: GETTY

By Nick Allen in Fort Hood

8:44PM GMT 09 Nov 2009

Hasan, who was shot four times during his attack, has been informed by doctors that he killed 13 people and injured dozens more.

FBI agents and military investigators were last night waiting to interview him.

Intelligence officers are said to have known months ago about Hasan’s attempts to reach the terror network through the internet but decided to monitor him, hoping it would lead them to al-Qaeda operatives. It was thought Hasan might lead them to a “big fish” and there was no indication he was about to carry out an attack of his own, one source said.

Up to 42 people were injured in the attack and 16 of those remain in hospital. Hasan had been in a coma since Thursday after he was shot by two civilian police officers.

He was taken off a ventilator over the weekend at Brooke Army Medical Centre in San Antonio. Maria Gellegos, a hospital spokesman, said: “He is talking. He is conversing with the medical staff.”

Hasan was moved to the hospital for his own safety after initially being treated at Fort Hood. There have been unconfirmed reports that he will be left paralysed by his injuries.

The FBI has meanwhile begun investigating Hasan’s links, first revealed by The Sunday Telegraph, to the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, which was attended by two of the September 11 hijackers.

Hasan attended the mosque at the same time as the hijackers in 2001 when it was led by Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Yemeni imam. Awlaki left the US the following year, eventually going to Yemen, from where he targets Muslims in America with radical online lectures.

It emerged on Monday that Hasan had been in contact with Awlak within the last year.

Communications, believed to be emails, were intercepted by US intelligence services. They were examined at the time but it was decided that they did not require following up.

The disclosure will open US authorities to criticism that they failed to recognise warning signs and fuel fears that Hasan was in contact with extremists abroad prior to the shootings.

In a posting on his website on Monday, headed “Nidal Hasan Did The Right Thing”, Awlak said Hasan had carried out a “heroic and virtuous” act and the only way a Muslim could justify serving in the US Army was to “follow in the footsteps of Nidal Hasan”.

He said: “Nidal Hasan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

The CIA will preserve intelligence files it holds relating to Hasan’s attempts to contact al-Qaeda. Hasan, an army psychiatrist, is known to have posted comments about suicide bombers on the internet six months ago that were noticed by US intelligence agencies. A computer he used in the weeks before the massacre is being examined.

Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, called for an investigation into whether the massacre constituted a terrorist attack.

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are due to attend a memorial service at Fort Hood on Tuesday.